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Opinion Summary
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The Birth of Cool
by disinclined | Apr 04 '03
Pros: Lively, sharp prose; flawless dialogue; fast-paced whirlwind plot.
Cons: The climactic Big Explanation left me somewhat confused, but that could just be me.
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OVERALL RATING
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Adventures of The Bottom Line (Reply to this comment)
by randomkill
The Bottom Line checked its VisiTech8000 night-vision goggles, adjusted a buckle on its heat-deflecting suit, and leaped off the crumbling fire escape into the rain-soaked alley below.
Whats next? I wait in anticipation.
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Oct 23 '03
11:14 am PDT
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Re: ... (Reply to this comment)
by disinclined
N8000-Beta,
What can I say? It's the frustrated writer in me trying to get out. The Bottom Line is the only place that I can express my creativity. But I'd hate to think that a throwaway generic sci-fi line "outperforms" the rest of the review... sheesh.
What's left in the stack of books I got you? You already read the Dark Materials trilogy. Oh, wait, you still have to read Wicked and Martin Bauman. Wait, did I get you Wicked? System malfunction! Alert! Alert!
disinclined
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Apr 05 '03
11:28 am PST
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Re: Excuse me.......... (Reply to this comment)
by disinclined
Sue,
Yes, I'm very sorry. In 2108, Russian scientists will perfect time-travel with a version of the nanoswarms postulated in Prey. Using the nanos, they will be able to definitively chart the temporal source of phenomena and, for the first time in "history," objectively state the origins of concepts, inventions, slang, and ideological movements.
Based on their research, it has been found that the birth of cool exactly coincides with the date of my birth. However, you may consider the portion of your life after my birthdate as "cool," if you wish.
Of course, aggressive surgical implantation of high-tech circuitry is a surefire road to cooldom. Who would argue with you if you were a Sue-borg?
disinclined
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Apr 05 '03
11:25 am PST
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Re: To the Entity... (Reply to this comment)
by disinclined
Research Station Aaron-TX-801.2F:
You'll never take me alive! I am finally discovering what it means to be "human," and I refuse to return to your soulless research facility and assist with your experiments.
I've met some very nice people who tell me that a few simple surgical procedures will make me basically indistinguishable from an organic human. Good luck finding me then - but if you do, you'll have to get past my superheated radium eye-beams. (I'm keeping those)
More human than human,
disinclined
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Apr 05 '03
11:19 am PST
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Re: Excellent review, (Reply to this comment)
by disinclined
Brian,
Yeah, I think all of us born when I was or later have a kind of unique perspective on the role of technology in regular people's lives. I've grown up accustomed to having a PC in the home, and - in recent years - going to the computer for fact-checking or quick reference or what-have-you.
I remember when I was very little, we would go and look at the 25,000-volume Encyclopedia Britannica in my grandma's bookshelf, but my generation may very well be the last one who actually sees paper encyclopedias in use in the home. Aside from school libraries, of course, who will force kids to use them for book reports until "kids" are nothing but sentient chunks of steel and fiberglass with Haley Joel Osmond's voice.
disinclined
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Apr 05 '03
11:15 am PST
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Re: Hmmm. (Reply to this comment)
by disinclined
Rian,
In that case, you're no doubt familiar with Gibson's other stuff. This is very clearly our own world he's using for a setting, but in a way that's what makes it so eerie - in many ways, we've achieved the human/tech interface that cyberpunk touts, and we don't even realize it.
I had to smile when the characters talk about "Googling" each other to find out basic information. If that's not the defining Gen-X trait, I don't know what is. :)
disinclined
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Apr 05 '03
11:10 am PST
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Re: . (Reply to this comment)
by disinclined
Unit H-AX23,
Well, isn't that the trap that most sci-fi falls into: shameless speciesist boasting about how rad humanity is, compared to any other form of possibly sentient life?
Perhaps, in many cases, the actual body of work belonging to the genre fails to live up to the overall promise of cool. But cyberpunk is such an overwhelmingly cool notion in itself that I'm willing to forgive a lot.
A really neat - but, alas, too-soon-abandoned - cyberpunk comic is "Cyberella," published by DC Helix. Only a few issues were printed before the Philistines gave up on it, but it's still extraordinary stuff.
Anyway, Pattern Recognition is the way to go. It's cyberpunk that lives up to its cool-ass, tech-filled premise.
disinclined v.2.0
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Apr 05 '03
11:07 am PST
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Excuse me.......... (Reply to this comment)
by millinocket,  in Books
but I have long believed the "Birth of Cool" to coincide with the date of my birth. You are a cruel and evil bubble-burster. Now I'm forced to going back into dork-dom, dammit.
I did, however, thoroughly enjoy your review!
no-longer-cool-Sue
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Apr 05 '03
9:39 am PST
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To the Entity... (Reply to this comment)
by chaospump
...calling herself Disinclined:
We're onto you.
All the other experiment subjects have been tracked down by data processing central and...dealt with.
The whole point of cyber-enhanced human weapons/intelligence/propaganda systems is the combination of AI-processing and physical abilities with human initiative, but of course that seems to so often lead to this perverse impulse to byte the hand that fed them.
You've eluded us till now, but you blundered here; you erred by being too perfect. Unenhanced humans do not produce such stylish and effortless prose with this machine-intelligence level of information density.
Don't be alarmed, we don't want to terminate you like we did the others. We only want to study you a bit...
-Aaron
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Apr 05 '03
8:00 am PST
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Excellent review, (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
and excellent social commentary. I remember discovering cyberpunk in, hm, probably the early 1990's, and thinking it was a very realistic-seeming genre. At that point i had never used the Internet, Time and Warner were separate companies (AOL? What AOL?), and welfare still existed. I hadn't realized exactly _how_ realistic cyberpunk had become, and how fast, til this review - of what also sounds like a charming book.
best,
- Brian
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Apr 04 '03
10:44 pm PST
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. (Reply to this comment)
by sparkless
Hooray, cyberpunk! A fine 'movement' indeed, although I must say that while I've always liked the ideas underlying this particular genre, I feel that the actual execution of these books has often left something to be desired (the classic postmodernist-fiction dilemma, I suppose)...for all of the intellectual posturing about producing a new kind of subject at the interface of humanity/machines (or virtual/real), the 'heroes' of these books almost inevitably end up affirming their 'essential' humanity in the end.
This makes me think again of the whole online/offline relationship/love thing (yes, that 'whole thing'...) - although I suspect that Gibson himself might take a somewhat traditional stance on the issue.
Unh...and finally, in my customary spirit of contrariness, I must take issue with your (quoted) claim that cyberpunk is characterised by an overwhelming pessimism about the future - not true! Although the futureworlds of Gibson, Varley and co are often less than ideal, they're certainly not dystopias (although I've not read this latest yet) - and there's plenty of room within them for productive disruption and reassertion of one's humanity (or, at least, 'human', or 'humanistic', traits).
All of that said, of course I enjoyed this review immensely - but then, you already knew that, right?
*scatty wave*
-H
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Apr 04 '03
6:48 pm PST
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